Situation

This room needed to function as a laundry room, crafts and storage area as well as the production area for a home-based business. Although the home is beautiful, it is small craftsman built back when closets and all rooms were very small.

Challenge

My client has a popular line of gorgeous baby accessories including burp towels and bibs but does not have a lot of room to create and sew as the orders come in.

Solution

We divided and conquered this room by first determining which activities were most important within this space. After deciding that the home-based business needed as much space as possible, we re-contained and moved every unrelated item up and off the counter and into the side cabinets. We decided which shelves should hold which craft based on the frequency they were needed. The more frequent gift wrapping and card-making supplies were stored in the shelves at eye level.

Once the counter was clear, we were able to sort and organize all fabrics and place them within the sewing zone to the right and under the counter.

As you can see in the photo below, we still have an area for miscellaneous projects and tools in the side cabinet.

The one thing I love about craftsman cottages is that once you can organize and look beyond their small size, they often have exceptional built-in storage areas!

Situation: A two-car garage that held a motorcycle and everything else but the cars! I love this case study because it is very typical of the most common garage challenges. There were fabulous built in cabinets, shelves and overhead storage available but they were difficult to access because of everything piled around and in front of them.

Challenge: The garage had served as a work-out room for awhile and then feel into disuse when the owners moved onto other fitness routines. So what to do with the equipment? There was a treadmill, step machine, free weights with incline bench and a punching bag.

Additionally, there were multiple bicycles and surfboards without a specific place to live.

Solution: We created a work-out room upstairs in a spare bedroom and the free weight and bench which are still useful for the new work-out routine will be moved up to that area. The stepper, treadmill and punching bag were donated to the San Pasqual Foster Academy which really needed the equipment to keep the boys happy. This created a lot more space.

We then took it one step further and hung up all of the grown-up bicycles from the ceiling keeping the daughter’s bicycle, mini-car and wagon accessible on the floor. The motorcycle will be sold in the near future to create even more space.

Once the main floor was cleared, we were able to get inside the storage units. We sorted, boxed and rearranged memories and holiday items and put them in the overhead storage area which opened up space in the easy-to-access cabinets.

With the open space, we were able to bring out entertaining supplies to the garage which helped to create more space in the pantry. We also created holding zones for various sports and activities including camping, triathalon, beach etc.

Another cabinet is now dedicated to household supplies bought in bulk.